One of my great friends, a lay leader of incredible brilliance and insight, was describing the lay Chair of a (once) great community. Everything said about this Chair, a person of uncommon generosity, was hedged in such terms as to resonate a single word that appeared to be the seminal descriptor: pliant. Yes, pliant. Look the adjective up if you need.
Pliant is the adjective I would never allow to be applied to me, even as I reflect back to moments during my own leadership roles when I was so. If you know me, if only from these thousands of pages, I think that pliant wouldn't be how you would describe me. Yet, today, as the culmination of a terrible trend line, more and more organizations have elected lay leaders based upon proof over time of a softness, a willingness to bend to the demands of others. In fact, a ready pliancy has too often become all some organizations look to in their lay leadership. And, every organization that has turned to the pliant has suffered as a result -- suffered from a lay leadership unworthy of organizational respect or trust. And the impacts on the organization that demands pliancy of its leaders...devastating.
I and others from other eras — lay and professional alike — must take the lions’ share of the blame for producing a surfeit of Burrs and a paucity of Hamiltons. Back in the late 1980s I was engaged with both the CJF and UJA, working with other great communal leaders on the challenges of the “New Jewish Poverty,” and the explosion of intermarriage, and the challenges facing Jewish Federations in a deep recession; while UJA leaders were advocating for greater funds for our partners and both organizations were advocating for freedom for our extended mishpacha locked behind an Iron Curtain.
I felt no pressure from the leaders I venerated to toe a line, watch my words, to “go along to get along.” These were women and men confident in themselves unthreatened by competing ideas — Shoshana Cardin, z’l, Max Fisher, z’l, Marvin Lender, Joel Tauber, Richie Pearlstone, Bill Berman, z’l, Alan Jaffe, Alex Grass, z'l, Jane Sherman and, later, Carole Solomon and Bob Schrayer, z’l, among so many others. After my service as Chair of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry during the Exodus and then the Exodus Campaign itself, I had neither pretensions about nor expectations of being asked to serve as National Chair of the UJA — others were more deserving, perhaps more willing to go along, but it was the strength of UJA’s lay leadership to take a chance on he whom Max Fisher once described (and no doubt would today) as “a bull in a china shop.” I also have to believe (though we never discussed it) that I had the enthusiastic support Of UJA’s maverick CEO, Brian Lurie, who may have seen in me a kindred spirit...still am.
Some/many of you may be asking: ok, Wex, what's the point of this nice history lesson? Simply this: I happened to be in the right place at the right time. Today, even a decade ago, maybe longer, irreverence, standing up for what one believes, speaking out -- all, and more, are traits, behavior no longer tolerated by too many of those in power in too many places. I am reminded of being acosted by a long-time brilliant friend who had gained a place in JFNA leadership and told me in no uncertain terms that if I disagreed with a decision made “at the top” then I "should resign." (An evermore popular view.)
I look at so many philanthropists who have and had so much to contribute in terms of institutional memory, in terms of leadership qualities, whose leadership have been rejected over the years for expressing a simple, eternal thought and insight: The Emperor Has No Clothes. We...WE...have more often than not stood by in silence while organizational leadership ranks decided they had to cleanse themselves of those who pushed back or spoke out or dissented — in public or private, it has made no difference. And I, like you, have watched as others have matriculated to positions for which they proved unsuitable — as conformity, pliancy, too often rules the day.
Chevre. look around as I have. I see one organizational leader whom I did not know before he/she assumed a critical chairship. I was told by those who knew him best as a "no nonsense" person "who will not suffer fools for long" -- and, then that person did exactly that, suffered fools, drank the Kool-Aid and grew irate with any...any...suggestion that his/her path was not the right, the only, one.
Or, others who have wandered from one organizational lay leadership role to the next, leaving not an accomplishment in their wake -- they have served, continue to serve, without leaving even a modicum of their DNA to show for their service. Those whom I know are women and men who used to assert themselves, privately and publicly...no more. They will tell you that they have determined that the only path to effect change is the quiet, behind-the-scenes path. Yet, there is no evidence...zero...that they have even, ever taken that quiet road.
So, I ask, what good is it to be in the room where it happens if there is no evidence you were there? The legacy of these "leaders" will be exactly the lack of any imprint on the entity that they leave behind.
Right now our system, constructed over the decades by so many leading to achievements thought unattainable, is challenged as never before. The system's very survival is now in your hands. You, as an organizational leader -- be it lay or pro -- can either be ready to take a risk where risk is needed or commit to principle when commitment and principle, vital. Or you can join the ranks of the pliant. While the choice, my friends, is yours, it should be ein breira.
Rwexler
Unfortunately your post is exactly on point, but I would offer another couple of points as it relates to the professionals and lay leader partnerships. I, like you have been involved in Jewish communal life for over 50 years (I think you may be a year or two older than me) and too often have seen the following: 1. Professionals that do not see themselves as leaders, but rather believe that to keep their positions have to agree with the lay leaders; and lay leaders who too often are afraid to make the hard decisions about their professional partners to either give them a critical evaluation (or worse remove them from their positions) because it is easier to wait out their term in office for the next person to deal with (or better to have the person we know than the person we don't know). Neither of these behaviors makes for a successful organization or is in the best interestsof the organization, the professional or the lay leader.
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